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The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Wis. school districts giving merit based pay trial runs

School districts across Wisconsin have made strides toward reforming the state’s teacher evaluation process by implementing new merit-based salaries for teachers under new powers provided by the budget repair legislation.

Under Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial legislation, bargaining units for teachers are still able to negotiate base wages, but cannot negotiate other areas, including certain funds allocated for teacher performance. The bill now gives more authority to district leaders to make changes in working conditions, hours and compensation systems for teachers and staff.

Cedarburg School District in eastern Wisconsin is one of many schools making a move toward the merit-pay system for teachers. The district’s superintendent, Daryl Herrick, said the new criteria for pay would be based on a new evaluation model.

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“There would be teachers in three-year cycles,” Herrick said. “There will be varied activities in the cycles where both the evaluator and the teacher provide direct observations to indicate their performance levels. We’ll also have a goal-setting process in order to determine performance.”

Although Herrick has been working toward reforming the teacher evaluation process over the last six years, he said the Walker’s repair bill gave the district the opportunity to create a pool of money based strictly on performance.

According to the budget repair legislation, there are two pools of money on hand. One pool is made of base wages that teachers can negotiate over, and a separate set of money is available that can be allocated based on performance.

Herrick said he is implementing the merit-pay system criteria toward the $300,000 pool of money set aside for teacher performance. According to Herrick, under the new criteria the Cedarburg School District will no longer be acknowledging experience, graduate credits or master’s degrees for the 2011-2012 school year.

Discussions on the pay-for-performance system have gone well, with the 25 percent of the Cedarburg School District’s teachers who have been included in the dialogue thus far, Herrick said. In the coming weeks, Herrick said he plans to go to every school in the district to explain the new system.

“The pay-for-performance part is pretty easy,” Herrick said. “The challenge is, and where the work really resides, is doing accurate, professional and fair evaluations of teachers. That’s where we’ve done our work, so it’s been a reasonable transition to connect that to pay for performance.”

Daniel Nerad, Madison Metropolitan School District superintendent, said merit pay is relatively new and still in a developmental stage.

Acording to Nerad, major conclusions should not be reached at this point in time concerning the new process.

“Our approach would be to let this work unfold and see what models, if any, bear looking at,” Nerad said.

Nerad said the MMSD’s current evaluation process is based on national teaching standards and focuses on development.

According to Nerad, evaluation reform will vary from district to district depending on if a school district has existing contracts up to June 30, 2013 or not. Cedarburg currently has a contract, and Madison does not.

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